Anthony Mason spotlighted the death of comic book character Archie Andrews on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, and pointed out that "it all ends...when an adult Archie takes a bullet aimed by a stalker at a gay friend." Mason turned to the comics' publisher, Jon Goldwater, and wondered if he was "trying to make a political statement with this comic book" [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump].

Goldwater denied that he was doing so, even though he underlined that "gun violence is too prevalent in this country, and we should do everything we can to prevent it." However, just hours earlier on NPR's Morning Edition, he hinted that he was indeed making a political statement:

I have never actually seen anyone buy Archie. I’ve seen them given to kids as gifts and that’s it. I certainly can’t imagine the dude who passes over the laser gun barbarian superhero book for a book about the hijinks of high school kids. It would be like someone trying to explain why the jewelry shopping show is actually much better than boring old baseball.

It seems like just about everything nowadays has a political statement.

Why is Archie getting shot, and saves his homosexual friend in the process?? Why is it the homosexual, of all of the characters, who gets saved?

Why do so many TV shows have homosexual characters nowadays? And why are those characters invariably cast in only a positive light???

Why are clergy on TV frequently presented in a negative way?

None of this is coincidence. Liberals are now to the level of using comic books to indoctrinate people.

I read Archie comics when I was young, many years ago. I fondly remember the adventures of Archie, Betty, Veronica, Reggie Mantle, Jughead. I remember Miss Grundy and Mr. Weatherbee from Riverdale High School.

At the risk of nostalgia clouding memory, I certainly don’t remember any political statements being made about social/political issues, such as they have decided to do with homosexuality nowadays.

In 1975, there were probably twenty-five million Americans who knew Richie Rich and Archie. Today? I’d put the number closer to 200,000.

If you go browse around the internet, the Archie company won’t even discuss current readership...which might be a red-flag that they are way down on monthly sales.

To bring the numbers up? Well...honestly....Archie would have to take a bullet for a gay Hispanic guy from the Ozarks who really wants Jughead bad, drives a black Camaro, cleans Veronica’s Mom’s car every Saturday while wearing spandex, and is a re-re-reborn Christian but won’t admit it in public.

Seriously, I just can’t imagine any eleven-year-old kid today....reading Archie unless they are stuck at Grandma’s house for the summer and she’s buying this comic book stuff in discount from the local grocery.

''' he underlined that "gun violence is too prevalent in this country, and we should do everything we can to prevent it."

I garon-dam-tee that the demographic committing the 'gun violence' in this country has no clue what an 'Archie' is and will never see Jon Goldwater's social lesson. This is merely preening for leftist status as king of the moral hill. "Gaze upon me for I am more moral than thee."

There have been so many instances of comics pushing the PC-agenda, but this really crosses over into a kind of ham-fisted propaganda that just doesn’t seem, at its core, innately “American” anymore.

Archie is an iconic character, one of the first cultural manifastations of “teen” culture (although Henry Aldrich precedes him by a few years), which really didn’t exist before the 1940s. Even in the 60s/70s and perhaps 80s, it was a strip that reflected nothing but a sense of innocuous, “carefree” humor. That was virtually its reason for being. Now being used as a platform for a truly sick political/social agenda is a reversal of everything it once represented.

I feel sorry for the ww2 generation. You fought for a society that would eventually turn around and spit on everything you held dear. Patriotism is seen as brutish. Christianity is talked of as narrow minded. The idea of a family environment is thought of as an antiquated idea.

And now even icons of the post-war era have been debased into political props.

That loss of the cultural war in the 60s may well have been the most devastating loss America ever suffered.

33
posted on 07/17/2014 6:59:00 AM PDT
by Bogey78O
(We had a good run. Coulda been great still.)

“I feel sorry for the ww2 generation”.
Is it just possible that because the ww2 generation came home and busted they’re buns for family & country but ignored what was going on politically and socially here helped to create the problem? I was born in 1940 and believe this to be true. My mother comes from a family of 11 of which five men served in the war. My father came from a family of six of which four men served. They were all so wrapped up in the opportunity to improve family life that they forgot what they fought for. If we were in that position we probably would have done the same. I am not trying to lay blame here but am trying to figure things out.

Is this a spoof? They are actually having Archie killed off by an anti-gay stalker? So they are ending Archie comic books, or will Archie be resurrected like Jesus? If he is resurrected, will he then sit at the right hand of the Father to judge the living and the dead?

I first became aware of this more than forty years ago, at screenings of the original Errol Flynn "Robin Hood" movie and the original "Time Machine" movie, both of which were included in a summer old-movie series in a college area. Any expression of idealism, humanitarianism, or traditional male heroism was met with sneers and guffaws from the leftist audience.

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